Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting the Australian Energy Market Amendment (National Energy Retail Law) Bill 2011. I note with interest that Senator Humphries talked about sabotage of the national electricity market; there is only one group of people sabotaging ongoing reform in the national electricity market, and that is the coalition because of its attitude to renewable energy, to energy efficiency and to bringing about the changes necessary to bring Australia into a competitive position in a low-carbon economy.

National electricity market reform is essential. In fact, it has been way too slow, consistent with the COAG process generally. My main criticism is that the COAG process tends to be a great big black hole where the federal government puts issues that are in the too-hard basket. Issues stay at COAG for an interminable length of time before any real reform comes out the other end. I am very pleased to say that there is strong recognition that the problem we have at the moment with electricity prices rising around the country is because there has been a failure to invest and that that failure to invest has been because of a lack of certainty. We are getting lots and lots of complaints around the country from councils that want to make new, green suburbs but are dissuaded from doing so because the energy market operator, because of the rules of the market, says it is too hard to balance the grid—it is all too difficult, everything is too hard.

The other problem with the way in which the national electricity market works at the moment is that its bias is on the supply side. That cuts out the real potential for energy efficiency in demand side management, which is why, in the course of negotiating the agreement with the government, there were two really critical recommendations: one was that the Australian Energy Market Operator look at planning for 100 per cent renewable energy; the other was that the federal government lead the process through the Ministerial Council on Energy to look at the bias in the national electricity market towards creating more and more supply side and instead enable more demand side management. The reality is that we need intelligence added to the grid. We need a smart grid operating right around Australia so that we can take advantage of what is happening and recognise that consumers want to be prosumers. They want to produce electricity from their own households and businesses, be empowered to consume energy, implement energy efficiency and be able to proactively engage with energy supply. There is a lot of business out there for people who can aggregate energy demand side savings and negotiate in the market on that. We are already seeing significant efforts made to bringing on renewables to shave off the peaks and make all sorts of improvements. Of course, with new battery technology we are going to get to the point where we will be able to avoid building substations as suburbs and businesses will be able to take on storage to go with their renewable energy initiatives and energy efficiency initiatives. That will lead to substantial savings.

Just as we had an enormous revolution in telecommunications, with mobile phones and mobile technology, which has made virtually redundant the idea of having to have a landline, there is going to be a real revolution in the electricity market in years to come. People need to think about what that actually means: what it means for us into the future; what it means when people decide that they will become self sufficient and disconnect themselves from the grid. They also need to think about what it means over time, especially people with large areas of roof space—for example, large warehouses or shopping centres, particularly the large outlets of various commodities. They might decide they can actually benefit by managing their own electricity. We will see substantial changes. We need massive reform to the national electricity market, and I am look forward to seeing that happen.

We also have issues with the renewable energy target and whether that can be fulfilled in the way that the parliament expected it to be, because we have ended up with this perverse outcome of three main retailers who are vertically integrated and are not signing contracts for new renewable energy. There is real concern about what will happen and whether we will end up with sabotage of the renewable energy target. The role of the three energy retailers will become clearer next year, when there will be a review.

We support these reforms, but they are only part of an ongoing process of electricity market reform. We look forward to an accelerated reform process and to the ministerial council's getting its head around the changes taking place in energy right around the world, but particularly here in Australia where fantastic new technologies are being developed not only in renewable technology, but in battery storage technology. Unless we get ahead of the game and think about what it is going to mean, we are going to end up with the national electricity market and the ministerial council scrambling to catch up.

I look forward to the implementation of the agreement that the Greens, the government and the Independents have come to, to see AEMO start planning for 100 per cent renewable energy, to see the Commonwealth take a lead at the ministerial council to bring about the changes to the national electricity market to give greater acknowledgment of demand side management and to see a much more proactive engagement with the future of energy and energy service delivery in this country.